October 28 Call to Action

U.S. Out of Iraq Now! We Are the Majority!End Colonial Occupation from Iraq, to Palestine, Haiti, and Everywhere!

October 28 Call to Action

Vote With Your Feet … and Your Voices, and Banners, and Signs!Let Every Politician Feel the Power of the People!

The people of this country should have the right to vote on the continuation of the war against Iraq. If this was a government of, by and for the people, the November 2006 election would be a referendum on Iraq. The popular will of the people is to end the war against Iraq. But the question of Iraq is not on the ballot. Most people will only have the chance to vote for politicians from one of the Twin Parties of Militarism. Neither represent the sentiment of the people who favor the immediate end to a criminal enterprise the selling of which has been based on lie, after lie, after lie.

Iraq is bleeding. Hundreds of thousands of people have died. U.S. soldiers are killing and being killed in a war of aggression, and taxpayers are spending $2 billion each week for a repeat of Vietnam.

The White House and the Pentagon have created a death-squad government in Baghdad that is modeled on the “Salvadoran Option” of the 1980’s whereby the U.S. government employed military and police death squads to quell a popular insurgency or resistance movement.

The people of this country are confronted with a choice in the face of this imperialist criminality. What shall we do in a situation where the majority sentiment favors an immediate end to the war but this sentiment has no real voice within the established political system?

The A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition has initiated a call for locally coordinated protests on Saturday, October 28th, just days before the pitiful charade known as the 2006 mid-term elections. The people will force the issue of the Iraq war onto the U.S. political stage by taking to streets in demonstrations in cities and towns throughout the United States. Tens of thousands of people will take to the streets in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, New York, Miami, Washington D.C. and in other large and small cities and towns throughout the United States.

Please make a tax-deductible donation today to help pay the many expenses for the October 28th protests. We are printing hundreds of thousands of leaflets, posters, placards, and petitions. We can only meet these and other expenses associated with building the antiwar movement with your generous donation. Please click here to donate or for information to send a check.

The war in Iraq is part of a region-wide strategy in the Middle East. The bankrolling of Israel’s escalating war against the Palestinian people is a central component of this strategy. The war against Palestine, including economic strangulation, bombings and assassinations, is paid for by the U.S. It is central to the aim of re-organizing the Middle East and to make it an outpost of U.S. neo-colonial domination and a giant forward-base area threatening the people of East Asia and South Asia and Africa. The threats against Iran and Syria must be understood in this context. So too should the widening war and occupation in Afghanistan.

We reject the call from the so-called opposition in Congress that calls for a strategic redeployment from Iraq and the placement of the divisions now deployed in Iraq into nearby locations and bases so that they can be used against other peoples in the Middle East. That is not a “peace platform” but a tweaking of imperialist military strategy.

We are building a global movement that unites rather than excludes all those who are resisting occupation and the threat of US military intervention.

The October 28 National Day of Action will also connect the Iraq war to Bush’s illegal overthrow of the government of Haiti and the continued occupation of that country. U.S. foreign policy is a bi-partisan program for aggression and threats against Cuba and Venezuela and intervention in the Philippines and the Sudan.

The People Can End the War!

The bloodbath in Vietnam only ended because of the resistance of the people. In Vietnam the majority of the people supported those carrying out military resistance to the foreign military invaders. In the United States, the people built a wide-reaching movement that spread everywhere, grew in militancy and included tens of thousands of rank and file soldiers who were sick and tired of being ordered to kill and be killed in a racist, imperialist adventure.

The war abroad is also connected to the ongoing class war at home. The corporations and banks are on a rampage. Working class people in this country are suffering from huge layoffs, low wages, the destruction of pensions, and the slashing of traditional job benefits, especially health care coverage. Young people - who are taught that hard work conquers all - instead face massive education cuts that make their goals increasingly difficult to achieve.

At the same time as torture centers have been set up at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and many secret locations around the world, prisons are being constructed at a record pace here. Prisons and jails are constructed at a record pace as a new form of social warehousing and punishment for working class youth who are aggressively recruited not for higher education and skilled jobs but to serve as foot soldiers in the imperial army.

Institutionalized racism is taking a devastating toll as poverty mounts in African- American, Latino and Native American communities. Hurricane Katrina proved that the rich will use even the most devastating natural disaster to intensify, not lessen, their assault on the people. And yet working class communities are fighting back. As the recent mass demonstrations for immigrant rights prove, millions of people are ready to take to the streets and struggle for justice. The movement for justice at home and in opposition to war and militarism are becoming one united struggle.

Millions of people in the U.S. have fought against the war in Iraq since before the invasion started. Now we can mobilize from the millions more who have turned against the war and are sick and tired of the government’s lies and deceit. Everyone must make the effort to reach out to their friends and neighbors and bring new people out into the streets.

All out for October 28 National Day of Action! Organize demonstrations, rallies, teach- ins, picket lines throughout every community in the United States.